5 Ways to Bring Holiday Fun Into the Speech Room

I just love this time of year. Holiday decorations are up, people are (generally) cheerful, kids (and teachers) are getting excited about the upcoming winter break, and we get to have fun with holiday activities. I’m always looking for ways to bring the fun into my speech room. This year, I decided to share some of my favorite activities for bringing the holiday fun into the speech room […]

1. Speech Room Elf on a Shelf – We have an elf at our house (Jingles) and I have several friends who are SLPs and/or teachers who have brought the fun of the elf into their classrooms. I have not been able to “adopt” a speech room elf yet myself, but I think some of my students would absolutely LOVE to have one in the room. Just think of all the great language you could work on each day while they look for the elf. I’m thinking pronouns, prepositions, etc. A Google search for speech or classroom elf will yield TONS of great ideas for using an elf in your speech room. Click HERE to see an older post from Jenna at Speech Room News about how she used her elf in speech.

2. Use winter/holiday themed apps – I love the Articulate It app from Smarty Ears and it has themes you can change throughout the year. The theme I am using now is the Christmas theme. My students love that I can change the theme and get more into the holiday spirit. I also love Toca Hair Salon Christmas (free). We use it to elicit language and also for reinforcement. So fun!

3. Hide the present – this is another fun way to get students into the holiday spirit. Place your activity for the day (artic cards, game, worksheets, etc.) into a wrapped box (with a lid for easy opening) and hide it before each session. Have the students look for the present at the start of each session. This will give them some excitement and curiosity as they open the gift to see what activity they will doing that day.

4. Craftivities! I love doing craftivities in speech. It breaks up the typical routine and gives students a finished product that they can show off to their class, teachers, and family…and gives them something to use for practice at home! There are so many Christmas/winter/holiday themed craftivities out there. An easy one to do is just a large piece of green construction paper cut into a triangle (tree) with circles of different color construction paper for ornaments. I print out small pictures that go with my students goals (target phonemes, verbs, pronouns, vocab, etc.) and they just glue them onto the ornaments and then onto the tree. Another great craftivity can be found over at Allison’s Speech Peeps (pic below is from her blog).

5. Christmas/Holiday books – There are so many great holiday books for children and so many book companions on Teachers Pay Teachers. I love to bring at least one holiday book into speech and base the lesson around the story. One of my favorite Christmas stories is Oh, What a Christmas! I’ve been working on a book companion for this story, but it won’t be ready this Christmas…be sure to check back!